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Sermon
George Johnson
... followers of Jesus focus on what is the essence of the kingdom of God. He wanted to show how the future coming of the kingdom impacts our lives today. This text, as much as any other, should be the guide for mission statements, budgets, programs and staffing in our churches. I believe this story is leading us to repent, to focus, and to celebrate as we seek to reorder our relationships and resources in response to the good news of the gospel. We need to repent of making complicated what is so simple. We ...
Sermon
David E. Leininger
... , let us look into establishing an after-school tutoring and recreation program which would encourage the good study and social skills that are needed to be a success now and will be basic in the 21st century. Such a program could be staffed by a combination of paid and volunteer staff. A third possibility: with our good facility, why not consider establishing a special program for those interested in developing specific skills. I am thinking now of the possibility of putting together a Computer Learning ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... of August 20, 1991, when martial law was proclaimed and people were commanded to go to their homes, many of these women disobeyed and went instead to the place of confrontation. Some of them fed the resisters in a public display of support. Others staffed medical stations, others prayed for a miracle, while still others, astoundingly, climbed up onto the tanks, peered through the slits at the crew-cut men inside, and told them there were new orders, these from God: Thou shall not kill. The young men stopped ...
4. I Am Only . . .
Jeremiah 1:1-19
Sermon
King Duncan
... . Soon, Thomas was able to build a housing complex for homeless girls, too. He continued, through the years, to build homes for destitute children. Each home provided nourishing food and met basic physical needs. Also, the homes were staffed by loving people who gave the children guidance, an education, and religious instruction. There were some who opposed Thomas' homes for children. Jealous welfare workers, disgruntled ex-staffers, criminals who exploited children, all spread rumors that the children ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
... we did monumental things for such a small body. We bought a bus for the church in Watts, in the midst of those riots that broke out in the mid-60s. We started a literacy training center for the Mexican migrant workers. We organized, funded, and staffed a training center for ministry to young sailors and marines at the nearby military bases. And we began to support foreign missionaries. Inspired by all that, a woman in the congregation who lost her son in Viet Nam wanted to give the insurance money for some ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... The mother is considered by friends and neighbors to be the perfect mother, in spite of the fact that deep down she knows she has difficulty loving her three children. It’s important to the husband to keep up the pretense of success--the large house, staffed with servants--but they are living on the edge, just like many families today. Listen as D. H. Lawrence describes this family’s life situation: “And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: ‘There must be more money! There must be ...
7. By God’s Spirit
Zechariah 4:1-14
Sermon
James McCormick
... by any standard of measurement. The buildings built…the classes taught…the prayers prayed…the lives touched and made new by Christ…the many helping ministries: scholarships provided, tutoring done, the needy helped, the hurting encouraged, the grieving comforted, and so many missions staffed and funded. Where would the list end? I look at all of that and I can only say, “Wow!” But even as you have been doing all of that, I am sure there have been those crossroads moments when there have been ...
8. Epiphany 6
Mt 5:21-37 · 1 Cor 3:1-9 · Ps 119 · Dt 30:15-20
Sermon Aid
Marion L. Soards, Thomas B. Dozeman, Kendall McCabe
... self-regard. Paul moves from the language of maturation to the model of a farm with its many different workers to make his points. Agriculture was a major enterprise in the Greco-Roman world. There were many large farms, owned by individuals and staffed by tens of thousands of slaves, each with a different specialization in the overall enterprise. In Paul's illustration the Corinthians would understand God to be the wealthy landholder and Paul and Apollos to be field-slaves with assignments to perform. Paul ...
9. The Attack Never Came
Mt 13:1-23
Illustration
King Duncan
... of August 20, 1991, when martial law was proclaimed and people were commanded to go to their homes, many of these women disobeyed and went instead to the place of confrontation. Some of them fed the resisters in a public display of support. Others staffed medical stations, others prayed for a miracle, while still others, astoundingly, climbed up onto the tanks, peered through the slits at the crew-cut men inside, and told them there were new orders, these from God: Thou shall not kill. The young men stopped ...
Sermon
John E. Harnish
... is anything like most of the priests and preachers I know—including the one I know best—it was with a mix of emotions: anticipation, a touch of stage fright, and yes, a bit of ego thrown in; weighted with the concerns of the temple—budgets, staffing, differences of opinion, divorces, deaths; maybe worried more about whether his stole was right than he was about whether his soul was right; full of faith and full of doubt, all at the same time, there to carry out this ancient ritual, repeated daily, but ...
Sermon
Stan Purdum
... for writing a term paper on a computer, and it struck Mrs. Edwards that that was an unfair advantage over less fortunate kids who attended the same school. The lab opened in 1996, funded by donations. For the first several months, it was staffed mainly by Mrs. Edwards and her husband, both of whom worked directly with the students. She continues to be involved there today.4 There are all sorts of reasons we can find ourselves feeling like Elijah did, depressed, alone, grieving, burned out, and feeling ...
12. A Miracle Child
Exodus 2:1-10
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
... , and they became a part of a community and then they became an order, a religious order within the Roman Catholic Church, and there’s hardly a city in the United States where the work of the Daughters of Charity is not felt. Two schools here in Memphis are staffed by Sisters of Charity. Now I have to be honest with you; until I went to this meeting two weeks ago, I had not known Elizabeth Ann Seaton. As I sat in a communion service, which we shared with those nuns in that place, and watched them go to ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
... in Perry County Mississippi. It is to Martha’s eternal credit that she always gave what she could. She has been kicked around a lot in many a sermon, but where would the ministry of Jesus be if we didn’t have Martha’s serving in the soup kitchens, staffing our Day Care Centers, loving with their hands in the grueling daily rounds of Nursing Homes? We need to see in Martha a call — a call to ministry in them mundane. And that’s the only place that many of us will ever have to minister. But Jesus ...
14. God’s Doing
Philippians 1:21-30
Sermon
Larry Lange
... impressed that this little church in the country with the ugly orange chairs and ugly orange carpet had such big plans and so little reason to believe they could be accomplished. They had, after all, no product or service to sell, no R and D department staffed with Ph.D.s and IT professionals, no marketing staff, no ... and then Don's eye caught the name of the contractors for the church's new building project: Badger Builders. Donna was raising her hand to approve the contract when he leaned over to her ...
15. Finding Financial Freedom
Luke 16:1-15
Illustration
Brett Blair
... The mother is considered by friends and neighbors to be the perfect mother, in spite of the fact that deep down she knows she has difficulty loving her three children. It's important to the husband to keep up the pretense of success the large house, staffed with servants but they are living on the edge, just like many families today. Listen as D. H. Lawrence describes this family's life situation: “And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: ‘There must be more money! There must be more ...
Sermon
James Merritt
... changed for all eternity. Envision a church that would bring a smile to the face of God and joy to the heart of God. What would that church look like? What kind of Christ followers would it produce? How would it impact that church’s programming and staffing and priorities and methods? That is what we are going to be specifically talking about with you over the next three weeks. What we are doing in this teaching series is taking a look at the mission of the church. We’re opening the Bible and listening ...
Sermon
King Duncan
... to “Love Me Tender” for a birthday party for his friend Bill Gates. Despite having substantial stakes in Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, American Express, and countless other companies, Berkshire has no public relations, human resources, or legal departments. Its headquarters is staffed by just seventeen employees. Mr. Buffett occasionally carries a cell phone but does not use one when he’s in his home city. He keeps no calculator on his desk, preferring to do most calculations in his head . . .” (2) Is ...
Understanding Series
Leslie C. Allen
... wall dedication ceremony? Indeed there was, according to the editor. At the close of Ezra 1–6 the narrator recognized in the dedication of the rebuilt temple an opportunity to put into place normative guidelines that echoed the Torah concerning the regular staffing of the temple. Similarly here, the editor supplements the wall dedication story with the enactment of two guidelines that brought the community into line with religious tradition in 12:44–47 and 13:1–3. Each of these passages begins with ...
19. Final Greeting
Philippians 4:21-23
Understanding Series
F. F. Bruce
... made of those who belong to Caesar’s household. Caesar’s household included not only members of the imperial family in the narrower sense but also a great number of slaves and freedmen. From the ranks of the freedmen the imperial civil service was staffed. These were to be found far and wide throughout the provinces, but nowhere was there such a concentration of them as in Rome—a concentration large enough to include a significant proportion of converts to the Christian faith. If this letter was sent ...
Sermon
Dean Feldmeyer
... work: Elementary age children are enrolled in the Freedom School in their area. The Freedom School meets at a church, school, or community for five days per week from 8:00 AM to 3:30 PM, for six consecutive weeks during the summer. The school is staffed by three adult administrators and college students who are paid interns on a ratio of 1 intern for every ten children. Schools serve a minimum of fifty children. Every day the children are given two nutritious meals and the morning hours are spent on reading ...
Humor
When told that the company to which he was applying for a job was already over-staffed, one fellow replied, "That's all right. The little bit of work I do wouldn't be noticed."
Sermon
King Duncan
... of the employees walked out, leaving behind 16 elderly, vulnerable residents and just two employees to care for them. The two employees who refused to leave were the cook Maurice Rowland and the janitor Miguel Alvarez. Imagine that: an eldercare facility being staffed by only a cook and a janitor. However, these two men couldn’t imagine abandoning the patients. So without any help or pay, Rowland and Alvarez worked around the clock for two straight days taking care of the residents. They fed them, kept ...
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